In enormous fighter jet sized bird form!
http://prehistoricanimal.blogspot.com/2009/07/argentavis-magnificens-is-largest.html
So what if it would be so much cooler if it was an Eagle to allow an epic Lord of the Rings parody including the return of the king sound track blasting on your ipod speakers and Ian Mckellen in a pointy hat and all his bearded awesomeness.
Wasn’t the air thicker in those days?
More oxygen, now, not so much.
um, what?
Jet sized?
I saw a comparison to a car.
You guys suck
the real question is how much protein is in it
thats nothing. some of the largest pterosaurs had wing spans up to 59 feet!
Think if that fucker shit on your car.
[quote]Petermus wrote:
You guys suck[/quote]
[quote]That One Guy wrote:
More oxygen, now, not so much.[/quote]
what are you talking about? there was less oxygen in the past and more CO2.
Agreed on the more CO2; not at all sure of the claim of less oxygen. It doesn’t seem likely, but I don’t have data on it.
EDIT: Wait a sec, this was only the Miocene, so I’m not sure on CO2 either. Will look this up. I actually had been thinking further back than this when making the “thicker air” post.
A very quick search seems to turn up that actually the amount of CO2 then was similar to the modern level. E.g., http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/285/5429/876
I didn’t find anything on the amount of oxygen.
The answer to the “thicker air” question then seems to be, probably no.
I was thinking that thicker air could explain larger birds being able to fly then than is the case, at least in practice, now.
And yet it’s only about 160-180 lb… It is nowhere near the WEIGHT of a car, much less a fighter jet (maybe OP was going by wingspan?). I can’t comment as to whether the oxygen or CO2 content was higher then, but greater density leads to more buoyant force as you all know.
But of course, given that it has a 19-26 ft wingspan supposedly, and 160-180 lb… well, there is (was?) supposed to be a 140 lb bird with an 11 (or 18, can’t remember…) wingspan, so a couple more feet in wingspan could easily account for that added mass.
According at least to a couple of sources the heaviest flying bird today is the great bustard, at 46 lb.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
According at least to a couple of sources the heaviest flying bird today is the great bustard, at 46 lb.[/quote]
Haha, yes I, too tried to look it up. It was from a while back, so it may have been a prehistoric bird. In fact, it may be the bird talked about in this thread. From what I remember though, that bird was almost purely a glider, so this even larger bird can’t be THAT impressive.
It turns out that this bird is thought to be a glider as well: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070702-biggest-bird_2.html
[quote]jasmincar wrote:
[quote]That One Guy wrote:
More oxygen, now, not so much.[/quote]
what are you talking about? there was less oxygen in the past and more CO2. [/quote]
Was there higher levels of CO2 in relation to oxygen or higher absolute levels of CO2?
[quote]Makavali wrote:
Jet sized?
I saw a comparison to a car.[/quote]
and not just any car, a fucking mini cooper
[quote]A Ninny Mouse wrote:
And yet it’s only about 160-180 lb… It is nowhere near the WEIGHT of a car, much less a fighter jet (maybe OP was going by wingspan?)[/quote]
There ya go.